A Day at the Fair — A Syrian’s Journey to Employment in Germany
The job fair for refugees and migrants that took place January 28 in Berlin was a very important day for Hassan Al Hashem, a Syrian who fled to Germany three years ago and is currently unemployed.
Hassan owned and worked in an Aleppo jewelry store for 15 years — “living in abundance,” he said — until the Syrian war took everything away, including his life savings. ”When the war began I had to leave my city; at first to another city, and then several years later I had to leave my home country,” Hassan told me three days before the job fair.
He arrived in Germany at the end of 2015, lived two years and five months in refugee accommodation facilities, and in the past 7 months has been renting a room in the home of a German family home on the outskirts of Berlin. He has been devoting most of his time to studying German, and he craves to find a stable source of income. “I need the feeling that I am independent, that I am standing with my feet on the ground, not just sitting here and receiving money from [German authorities],” he said.
On the day of the job fair, I met the 39-year old Hassan outside the Estrel Hotel, which…
